there's a devil in the church
by Laora
Summary: Her hair is white and her eyes are red, and that is reason enough for these men to gun her down without a moment's remorse.


_Title is borrowed from the song This Is Gonna Hurt, by Sixx:A.M._

* * *

They come with their light skin and their dark hair and their loud, loud guns, and her people are crushed like so many grains of sand beneath their stomping feet.

.

.

It should be as her grandmother always tells her: weak men and women survive great trials, and through these struggles Ishvala makes them strong. But how is she to be brave when she is only small, and these men are great and powerful, and they have trampled her fragile hands with heavy boots in order to raise themselves up?

How could she ever be strong when they have worked so hard to make her weak?

The conflict has raged for years (longer than she has lived, young as she is) but now there are whispers of men wielding magic, of infernos sprouting from fingertips and walls of stone appearing from their precious earth, and she wonders how she could ever hope to defeat them. It is the duty of Ishvala's followers to protect His land and His teachings, but these men burn the skies to the ground and destroy their holy temples, and use their guns and their forbidden magic to kill her neighbors and her friends. She is hidden, and that is why she is safe—she is concealed with her brother and her grandmother in this tiny cellar, with only food and water and prayers to keep them alive.

Her parents left when the ground beneath them began to shake and the skies turned dark with smoke. "Stay here," her father said, pressing her younger brother into her arms and kissing the top of her head. "Grandmother will take care of you. We will be back soon, and these men will be gone."

(That was weeks ago, now. Their food is growing stale and moldy, and the heat is stifling, and she is small but not too small to realize that Mama and Papa are not coming home.)

Her grandmother distracts them with games and stories, at first, and they pray to Ishvala when they should—before meals and sleep and after waking, while lighting their candles before this tiny, makeshift altar for their thrice-daily prayer.

These few moments are the only light they see, buried underground (deep, terrified, _safe_ ) as they are. It is small in here, and dark, and often suffocating. She cannot see her grandmother but for these few minutes each day, but her face grows grim, and her frame grows bony, and her hair grows thinner by the day.

(Grandmother claims she's measuring three equal portions of food for each meal. She is small, but not so small that she doesn't realize Grandmother is lying.)

Her brother grows restless, barely able to sit still and wishing to see the sun—wishing to climb the dunes behind their home and slide down again, just as they have done so many times before. He does not understand; he does not understand; and she does not know how to explain it to him.

How do you explain to a babe that the world has fallen down about your tiny ears?

(How do you explain that you're beginning to believe that your God has abandoned you?)

She has always been good—she has always done right by her parents and her elders, has prayed every day, exactly when she should, and has always believed fervently in what Ishvala teaches His children. So why has He allowed these strange men—who believe nothing of the Truth and trample their sacred ground—to destroy everything they have always held so dear?

She prays, still, if only in the hopes that He will begin to hear. After all, Grandmother and Mama and Papa have always told her that Ishvala listens to His children, and maybe He just needs to listen a little bit more. Maybe if she prays again tomorrow, these men will go away and she can see the sun once again.

But her brother cries more and more each day, tired and ill and hungry, and her grandmother sleeps, always, except when she wakes her for their worship. Her hands shake when she lights the candles for noontime prayer, when she mashes food for her brother—otherwise, he cries as his mouth is cut by the stale bread she and Grandmother share. Her hands shake and her eyes blur, and she does not want to worry about these things any longer.

Her life is falling apart— _she_ is falling apart—and though she tries to believe that this is part of Ishvala's plan for her to become strong, she has to wonder _why._

Her brother has not yet seen his third birthday but is already missing his parents. He is small and he is innocent and he is _dying,_ here, slowly, though she will do everything in her power to prevent it. Her brother is dying and he does not at all deserve it, and she wonders whether this is part of Ishvala's plan for her too, that her brother should die in her arms and her parents never return home and her grandmother starve herself to death just to keep her children's children alive—

They are followers of Ishvala, so why has He allowed this to happen to them?

(Her brother whimpers in the night, cries and holds tight to her arms because they are the only ones left; their world has narrowed down to these three lonely souls locked in a cellar, in the desperate hope that they will be spared the massacres wrought above.)

.

.

The next day, their food has run out, and Grandmother says she will go upstairs to find some more.

She knows it's a terrible idea—they all do—but Grandmother is her elder and so she does not argue. She holds her brother in the darkest corner as Grandmother carefully lifts the trapdoor, and she peers about for several moments before pulling her frail body up and out.

They get only a moment of blinding sunlight before the door falls shut again, and the rug is pulled over again to hide the latches.

Grandmother promised she would only be a few moments—walking to their neighbor's house to search or beg for food, because they have rationed and eaten everything that was once theirs. She said she would only be a short while, but time for morning prayers has passed, now, and her stomach rumbles, and her brother cries, and her grandmother does not return.

The sounds above them have been loud loud _loud_ today, rumbling and screaming and gunshots ringing through her ears like bells. Still, her grandmother does not return.

Their noontime prayers are performed in near-silence; she lights the candles as she should, but she tells her brother only to whisper the scant words he knows, for fear that the men above will hear them.

They are here; they are here; she knows they cannot let themselves be found.

(She is a girl of only seven years, but she knows this much, at least.)

If her grandmother does not return by nightfall, then she will not return at all.

.

.

The next day dawns with rumbling stomachs and a quaking ceiling, and there are yet only two of them in the cellar.

Her brother cries and holds his stomach, and she digs through the last corners of their bags for crumbs of bread to feed him. She, too, is hungry (so hungry)—this is so much worse than the fasting demanded by Ishvala, because even when you fast you can drink as much water as you need.

(Without water in the desert, her father always told her, you will die within three days. The sun and the sand will swallow you whole, and Ishvala will bear your soul into His glorious halls.)

She does not want to join her (parents') God. She does not want to be devoured by the desert in the dark and suffocating underground. She wants water to quench her parched throat, and food to feed her hungry brother, and the freedom to walk among her friends and family without fear of repercussions from the strange men with the blue eyes.

She distracts her brother as best she can, sings him all the songs she knows in the hopes he will fall asleep—but it is useless, and her brother cries, and all she can offer as comfort is the meager strength of her skinny arms to protect him from the outside world.

(It is not enough. It will never be enough.)

They do not perform their morning prayers, nor do they pray at noontime. Her grandmother would hit her and scream of blasphemy; her mother would cry and pull at her sash, begging to know why she would do such a thing; her father would only look on in grave disappointment, wondering how he could have raised such an awful daughter in his devout household.

But her grandmother is dead, and her mother is dead, and her father is dead, and Ishvala did not save them from the strange men's bullets. What good are prayers when your God will not protect you?

Her brother does not question her decision—does not seem to notice at all—and does not move from her lap that day. He is tired, and she is tired, and her mouth is dry, and she is dizzy. The blackness around them is suffocating.

She lights the candles about the altar, but does not pray.

Her hands are trembling as she tosses the match away and pulls her brother into a tighter embrace. His white hair is tangled and longer than it should be, but she has no blade with which to cut it. She works out the knots with her fingers to pass the time, humming nonsense songs under her breath, and hopes he will soon fall asleep.

His grip around her middle is slackening, and she is glad that she succeeds.

But that means she is desperately alone in this cellar, and the candles cast strange shadows upon the earthen walls, playing tricks with her blurring eyes and morphing into monsters that threaten to rip them apart.

Tears spill down her cheeks, but she knows she can do nothing, and so she closes her eyes.

.

.

She opens them again to a loud thumping directly above her head, and she jerks awake, pulling her brother closer. The candles have long since burnt out, covering them in darkness, but his even breathing is a small comfort even in these desperate circumstances.

The strange men are here.

The trapdoor is covered by the beautiful rug her mother wove for her father for their wedding day; it is large and thick and covers them completely. The men will not find them…so long as they do not move it.

There is the sound of something heavy dragging across the floor, and then the door above them swings open. She recoils, further back into her corner, and hopes that they will not see. But it is late morning, and the sun is beating down upon the village; the cellar is flooded with light.

The man with blue clothes and pale skin sees her almost immediately, and his gun is firmly in his hand.

She can only stare, her red eyes wide with fear, and grip her brother tighter against her chest. He is asleep, still, and that is some small blessing—he has never seen these men, and her elders have kept the worst of the stories from his ears.

He does not know why they hide away in the cellar—only that they must not be found.

She does not know what the man wants with her, but knows that the gun in his hand means only death. Her hands are shaking, and her vision is blurring again as she swallows against a dry throat, hoping that maybe he will leave them be. Surely, the strange men are not all so terrible? Surely, this man realizes that they are only small, and could never hurt him or his friends?

The man is oddly similar to her, but for the color of his skin and his hair and his eyes. His face looks young—younger than her parents, but older than her by far—and though his grip on the gun tightens, he hesitates as he looks down at the two of them.

She cannot understand what his face is saying, and she is terrified.

"Private? Did you find something?"

A deep, angry voice barks from elsewhere in the house as heavy footsteps draw closer, and the man jumps and glances over his shoulder.

"Uh, yes, sir, but…it's just a couple of kids."

She does not understand what he means by this, but pushes herself further into the corner, wishing desperately that she could disappear into the earth and take her brother with her. She wishes that the land could spirit them away to safety, somewhere that her parents and her grandmother await their safe arrival. She wants her family, and she wants to live in happiness and peace with them like she used to.

(The earth is unmoving, and the air does not listen to her whispered pleas.)

"You have your orders, Soldier!"

"Yes, sir," the man says again, and swallows, his throat bobbing up and down as he turns to look at them again. She opens her mouth—to say what, she does not know, but his face has changed, now, and his eyes are hard.

He lifts the gun.

She whimpers, hugs her brother tighter, and squeezes her eyes shut.

.

.

Two gunshots ring through the house in quick succession, and then the soldiers move on without looking back.


End file.
